The People With Power at TikTok Owner Bytedance
As TikTok's U.S. drama nears an end, the popular app's owner ByteDance has reorganized itself to try to copy TikTok's success with its other apps and justify its $100 billion valuation.
ByteDance, owner of the powerhouse social media app TikTok that is caught up in the U.S.-China trade and cybersecurity war, has been busy restructuring itself as it looks to duplicate TikTok’s success internationally with some of its newer apps, according to new data viewed by The Information.
Assuming ByteDance, whose leadership is based in Beijing, retains equity ownership control of its valuable U.S. TikTok operations, the deal may pass muster with the Chinese government. That government recently said Bytedance’s intellectual property—such as the addictive video-recommendation algorithm behind TikTok—was not for sale, despite a Trump Administration order requiring Bytedance to sell TikTok in the U.S. Earlier on Monday, Oracle and the Trump Administration said Oracle would be the “trusted technology partner” to TikTok, implying the database company would promise to secure U.S. customers’ data but not acquire TikTok’s assets.